Brits' inquiry targets medical staff

July 3, 2007|By Alan Cowell and Raymond Bonner, the New York Times

LONDON -- British police officials investigating the failed car bombings in London and Glasgow focused Monday on suspects in the medical profession, including a doctor from Jordan, another from Iraq, and medical workers or students. As many as five of the seven people arrested so far in Britain appear to have such links.

The inquiry also spread to Australia, where the Australian attorney general, Philip Ruddock, said Tuesday that police in Brisbane had arrested an Indian national who had been employed there at a hospital.

Many of the staff at Britain's state-run National Health Service hospitals are foreigners. For the public, the number of health professionals under arrest offered a baffling departure from images of homegrown Islamic terrorists, many with family roots in Pakistan, implicated in previous conspiracies.

Police are investigating whether the same men carried out the attacks in Glasgow and in London, which police had already described as linked in the way they were planned and carried out, a senior Western official said Monday.

Three people were arrested Monday, including the hospital worker in Australia and two other people at a residential facility attached to the Princess Alexandra Hospital close to Glasgow that has become central to the investigation.

British news reports, relatives and a person close to the investigation identified two of the detained medical doctors as Mohammed Asha, from Jordan, and Bilal Abdullah, from Iraq. A 26-year-old man arrested in Liverpool over the weekend may also have been either a medical student or a doctor, a person close to the investigation said.

Asha, 26, was arrested late Saturday when police in unmarked cars boxed in his car on the M6 highway in northwestern England and forced it to a halt. He was accompanied by a 27-year-old woman whose link to the alleged conspiracy is unclear.

Abdullah was seen in amateur recordings as being arrested and led away by the police after two men tried to ram a Jeep Cherokee into the entrance of Glasgow's airport Saturday.

British medical records said he qualified in Baghdad in 2004 and had been licensed to practice in British hospitals as a doctor under supervision since August 2006.

The inquiry spread to Australia because the suspect there had been a roommate of one of the detainees in Britain, an Australian official who spoke on condition of anonymity said.